Friday, June 1, 2007
Take this to be a personal eulogy and obituary.
Friday, May 18, 2007
This may be a little long...
Jean Baudrillard writes in such a way as to provoke thought and action, yet gladly admits in interview that he is playing with us, that is he shows us a problem which it would appear we should fight against and then goes on to say that the problem perhaps should not be fought against at all, rather embraced and pushed forth. Heidegger in his writings about technology and the future that it holds for us, poses the problem, seems to seek an answer yet does not provide one for us except to say that the pre-Socratic Greeks had it right, so perhaps we should go back to our roots in an attempt to become more “authentic” and let big ‘B’ being run it’s course. In my mind, and as a way of avoiding us being turned into standing reserve, Heidegger would have all of us strip naked and lay under fruit trees with our mouths open, letting the rain slake us and the falling fruit feed us, to sit and do nothing more than muse and think and become nothing useful but merely to be and be as nothing and everything at once. I clearly have a slightly sarcastic tone when talking about Heidegger as while I did enjoy his writings and saw his prescription of the problem as interesting for the time, his notion of “Being” bugs me. I see a sense of mocking in Jean Baudrillard that plays off of this post-modern problem presentation, yet rather then fighting against this so called problem, perhaps we should reframe ourselves into using it for the best.
To put all of this another way Nietzsche discusses the notion of the eternal return, as a demon visits you and tells you that your life and every instant within it will be repeated an infinite amount of times. From this point you have two options: you can either gnash your teeth and be horribly disgusted by the mere idea that every moment of your horribly pained life will have to be played out again OR you can thank him and rejoice in the absolute joy that is the eternal replaying of your life which you controlled and enjoyed. Now then in today’s society the demon has a much larger proposition for all of us, and Baudrillard brings it out, today’s demon comes to all of us and tells us that we will be forced to live on this earth for all eternity, generation after generation will be born, live out and die here, there will be a never ending line of humanity. Now looking in the past of this world we could think how horrible this will be, that the wars and pestilence, disaster and atrocities will continue on forever OR we could look to the present and realize that we can now change the past, monitor the present and control the future, and all through the beauty that is the image!
Now then most philosophers write down their ideas in one of two ways, as a prescription for living or as a problem for solving. I would like to think that I have done both in this paper. Unlike a philosopher who gives a problem merely to ask it be solved, I have already given my own idea of where we can go from here using what I think to be the natural progression of Baudrillard. As where anyone who through vocative language calls or tells us how to be usually waits for another person to critique them, I plan on pulling out the own problems with what I am saying (using Baudrillard as my foundation), mainly that I am unsure if the sacrifice of all I am asking to be sacrificed will really make things better. Contentment is nice, but it allows for no art, no true progress and certainly no sense of accomplishment or pride. Contentment is what would occur, as I see it, if the plans I laid out were followed. Contentment also has no dissatisfaction or pain, nothing but light-hearted enjoyment in a state of mildness for all eternity. It would be enjoyable and non-challenging, and I am fairly certain that George Orwell or Aldous Huxley would hate me for saying that I think it’s what we need (but what they missed is that in utopia, there would be no individual to fight against the contentment which everyone else was feeling anyways). Also as I stated before I am unsure if there is anyway to work in ourselves to this equation of salvation, but rather we would be doing it for the kids. So now critique, pull apart and examine away! If I have done injustice to what Jean Baudrillard was saying, it is hardly of any worry now, as all texts are open to interpretation and this is mine.
Monday, May 14, 2007
Worthwhile
As far as I can understand the only possibility for a utopia would be to have a totalizing world view that everyone was in agreement with, however when I say everyone I do not mean everyone on earth at this moment. I doubt there is any possible perspective that everyone in the world could get behind, due to language barriers, class structures, religious beliefs and a myriad of other distinctions that people pride themselves on. So after removal of however many millions it would take to slim out the population enough to have one idea that could encompass all people, they could continue on, following the one principle, teaching their children that it was always like that and moving forward from there.
Many writer's who have attempted to explain the future as utopia always introduce an individual as being the only blip in an otherwise perfect world, but being individuals themselves, the writers often time try to show the positive side of individualism, as containing art and beauty and love. Problem being that until the individual shows up (be it Guy Montag, John the savage or Winston Smith, etc.) no one is dissatisfied, no one is unhappy, no one is hungry, no one is poor, and so it is that the utopia is literally the best thing for the most people. Depth in life causes pain, loving one person over others causes jealousy and rage, everything about an individual that makes him/her unique is their flaws or by contrast their superiority over all others (which makes those peoples flaws all the more obvious) and we live in uncertainty through this world.
Now I argue that love is a perfectly acceptable sacrifice to remove hate, that in fact we should give up the practice of art, war and politics to make way for the Utopia that would ensure all people's pleasure and satisfaction throughout their lives (without a guarantee or even notion of a just afterlife I believe we should maximize contentedness and destroy displeasure in life). But I said before that I could not fit into a utopia, and that is because I am a product of this world and this life, have developed love and hate and a range of other human emotions, have learned to actually love stoicism and generally believe myself to be important.
If Utopia is guaranteed I will be the first to march to the volcano to make way for infinite generations of contented people, but until then I will be petty, artful and generally kind as long as the world is the way it is, and I am a part of it (whether I like it or not).
In conclusion I love and hate for the lack of ability to do anything else.
Wednesday, May 9, 2007
थे उर्गे तो देस्त्रोय
All of that being said, I am writing this on the topic of the human urge to destroy, my musings on the topic and perhaps where it came from and why it exists. First of all I suppose I should specify what I mean by destroy as I'm sure it could be interpreted in different ways. When I say destroy I am going to be specifically talking about the destruction of objects, whether physical or not, for no inherent gain or purpose other than the destruction itself. The use of the word destruction in my definition of destruction is sloppy, so I will define the word destroy as a mode of changing something to an all new form which is first of all very little to nothing like the way it was and secondly altogether useless as compared to it's previous functionality and purpose. Also in my definition I talked about two different types of objects, those being physical and non-physical objects. Physical objects as a concept is not that hard to grasp, anything containing matter, made up of molecules and atoms and just being generally solid, liquid or (i suppose) gas. Non-physical objects are still nouns, but in the sense that a noun is a person, place, thing or idea, these objects are ideas. So how does one destroy an idea? Well of course I will say that it is near impossible to expect to destroy an idea on a whole, however for the destruction which I am talking about, it's more the idea that can be held by one or a few (or perhaps many depending on your power position), that can be exploited or denied. An example of these ideas I will say would be like the belief of Santa Claus that a young person may hold, or to become more complex, a relationship between two or more people. Of course by telling the young child that there is no Santa, and proving to him/her beyond a reasonable doubt that this is so, would be the destruction of that idea. There would be many ways to destroy a relationship, as a person who is involved you could change yourself to a point of disgust to the other(s) and as an outsider it is always possible to twist the image of those involved.
Karl Marx had an opinion about the need of humans to alter their surroundings to reflect themselves in order to find fulfilment. This was his way of saying how we as humans could avoid the feeling of alienation (which was a sort of notion that we felt like we didn't belong on our own earth through the taking away of the product of our labor, leaving us with processed goods from other factories). By changing our surroundings to reflect one's wants, needs, beliefs and ideas then the world became a familiar place that accepted us. In today's world however (especially in America, and mostly in Urban or Suburban places) this is next to impossible. We inhabit houses and apartment buildings that had nothing to do with ourselves, we are too busy to use interior decoration and we work on things that we cannot see ourselves in. So we are alienated, but alienation doesn't necessarily lead to destruction, but I will say that the feeling of alienation is one necessary part to the equation.
The other part, I believe, comes out of nihilism. Nihilism is the belief that nothing matters, the universe is void of all or any intrinsic meaning. This nihilism stems from many things, but Nietzsche saw nihilism as coming out of the slow but steady rise of science disproving religious standards causing the notion that if there is no god and no greater purpose, then there is no purpose to anything whatsoever. When a nihilist looks into themselves they see nothing, and when they look outside of themselves they see nothing.
Now since I have said that the urge to destroy came out of parts of alienation and nihilism. So as we grow, so does our feeling of alienation, that the world is not our own and we as a human being do not belong in nature, and nature is all that belongs on earth. Then our beliefs are challenged and our morals are pushed aside and we begin to think ourselves nihilists. Now then our alienation makes us want to fight against our not fitting in by transforming our surroundings, and our nihilism makes it so when we look inside we see no intrinsic meaning. But the world still tries to convince us that there is meaning, every institution has it's morals, every school it's teachings, every vein of art work it's techniques, and we grow to hate this unequivity. So there is one logical conclusion, to make the world fit ourselves we must destroy, and destroy without prejudice. Everything must be reduced to nothingness as we think that we are nothingness.